September 9, 2008

spirited away

Spirited Away is a fantasy adventure with a ten year-old girl, which starts in everyday Japan but goes somewhere very different. For young Chihiro and her family, a mysterious tunnel and haunted town lead to the Land of Spirits, inhabited by gods and monsters and ruled by the greedy witch Yu-baba. Chihiro’s parents are transformed into pigs; to rescue them, she must surrender her name and serve in this world. Luckily she finds friends and allies, including the handsome but mysterious boy Haku. Initially sulky and listless, Chihiro (or Sen, as she’s now called) finds inner strengths and establishes an identity in this strange world. But can she win back her name and return home?

got a link? i’m aware of the red tint issue the r2j has, which i just lowered in the encode.
not aware of another print though. and i did not want to use the r1 because of its disney coloring, like mononke hime.

ah, thanks. though seems there is no new print of a r2j. just a r1 release.
so far, the r1 ghibli dvds had quite a different coloring touch, as well as contrast differences to the r2js.
one could say it’s more linear, plainly done colorwise than the r2j which i was trying to refer to as with ‘disney coloring’.
best example is still mononoke hime which has a blue tint issue on the r1. guess it’s the counter which went overboard to intentioned ghibli coloring.
of course it’s up to the viewer which colorscales one prefers, but i’d honestly still stick rather to the r2j coloring than r1.
on a sidenote: you can still change the colorscales in playback with avisynth without much of a decoding penalty, though you start to get a bluish tint issue to get things as whitish as the r1 which seems to have a bluish issue on selective scenes as well (mostly darker ones).

Thank bob my CRT has a menu to modify the colour temperature. It looks really much easier on the eyes and appealing – kind of obviously “as intended” – towards 9000K. If you already lowered the red tinting I can easily relate to the guys who sued the distributor over this release. How could they ruin something so badly that won an Oscar and even refuse to admit it?